It feels a little odd to suggest
that the first Cameron Crowe film not to have been pulled
out of his own experience -- or, indeed, even his own original
idea -- may be his best movie so far, but Vanilla Sky
takes risks that even his best prior movies (Say Anything,Singles,Jerry Maguire, and, for some
fans, Almost
Famous) don't get near. Crowe's strength, and occasionally
his weakness, has been the preternatural kindness of his
vision -- the democratic insistence that everyone onscreen has
merit, the refusal to make anyone look bad. Vanilla Sky,
on the other hand, gives us the first complete bastard in the
Crowe portfolio, and puts him front and center.

David Aames is a late-period
Tom Cruise character -- cocky, arrogant, rich, catnip to the
ladies. David refers to himself as "snowboarding through
life," though snowboarding implies effort. Heir to a magazine
publishing house, David drifts into the offices every day, amused
by the shared joke that he's in charge (he got 51% of the company's
control in his dad's will), though no one else is amused. He's
not malicious, particularly, just heedless of anything but his
own pleasure. This does not go over well with clingy women like
Julie (Cameron Diaz), who wants to be more than an easy, responsibility-free
"fuckbuddy" for David; she holds out the hope that
he will fall in love with her, but she faces stiff competition
from his mirror.

The mirror, in turn, loses
out to the enchanting Sofia (Penelope Cruz), introduced to David
by his best friend Brian (Jason Lee, in probably his finest "best
friend" role yet, seething with barely-suppressed resentment)
at David's lavish birthday party. Sofia is with Brian, but leaves
with David, who abandons his own party to talk with her -- just
talk. It's clear he's smitten with her, mainly because, unlike
Julie, she doesn't seem to need him -- doesn't want anything
from him. Crowe is careful to show us Brian and Julie (who crashes
the party) getting drunk and shaking their heads over the thoughtlessness
of their respective friend and lover, who is as innocently hurtful
as a kitten who inadvertently scratches you while playing.

Some things happen. Those things
take up the film's remaining 90 minutes, and I cannot disclose
them; Crowe scrupulously follows the story he's remaking -- 1997's
Abre Los Ojos(Open Your Eyes), directed
by Alejandro Amenabar (The
Others) -- which holds its many plot twists aloft as
deftly as a plate-spinner. Disfigurement is on the menu; the
mirror disappears. Julie leaves, then comes back. A psychiatrist
(Kurt Russell, in fine regular-guy form despite his professorial
specs) tries to get behind David's mask, symbolically and literally.
Crowe brings in Tilda Swinton for one late scene and puts her
behind a desk, where she transfixes us while not actually doing
much of anything at all. In the kind of only-in-this-movie great
balls-out moment I'll never forget, Tom Cruise whirls around
an empty lobby having a nervous breakdown, screaming "Tech
support! Tech support!" while "Good Vibrations"
blares on the soundtrack.

Crowe riffs on Abre Los
Ojos, keeping it fully intact as a narrative while bringing
in his own obsessions -- movies and music, the sight and sound
of dreams. And Vanilla Sky is very much a dream movie,
or at least preoccupied with the meaning (and seeming reality)
of dreams. This, as well as the eager cooperation of Tom Cruise,
links it with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes
Wide Shut, also about a self-satisfied yuppie whose balloon
gets popped by an unpredictable woman. Cruise isn't quite as
soulful as Eduardo Noriega, who played the role in the original,
but he gives David his own swaggering sense of entitlement --
Cruise is building a large body of work in which he plays fatherless
young roosters who become humbler and better people, except this
film doesn't quite give him that opportunity. He has some wild
moments, though -- one of my favorites is when Sofia sweetly
deflects one of David's questions with "I'll tell you in
another life, when we come back as cats," and David reacts
with simultaneous love (in his drunken state, this is the greatest
thing he's ever heard) and rage (in his current state, this is
the greatest woman he'll never have).

Crowe's Almost Famous,
to me, felt overdeliberate and solicitous, as if he'd been chewing
over the story his whole life (which, actually, he had) and sought
to avoid hurting any of the film's real-life counterparts. Vanilla
Sky doesn't come out of anything deeply personal for him
-- he's being a cover band here, playing the same notes, yet
somehow making it his own. As always, he's attentive to the smallest
details of friendship and romance, and here he also delivers
his most gaudily cinematic work yet -- his filmmaking has never
felt this raw and alive before, from the gray despair of a prison
cell to the red lust and thrum of a dance club. This is a whole
new palette for Crowe, and his excitement rubs off on us. It's
a nasty, vibrant piece of work; Crowe's filmmaking mentor Billy
Wilder -- often a wonderfully nasty piece of work himself, as
anyone who's seen Sunset Blvd. can attest -- would be
proud.